this is the first in a series of interviews i’m conducting with southern climbers before they all move to the frontrange. i’ve tentatively titled this series: “interviews with southern climbers before they move to the frontrange”.

jon glassberg interview feat. jon glassberg (slo ride mix)

when Jon is not directing short films about tortilla chips he also climbs boulder problems. he climbs hard boulder problems. one might call him a hard boulder problem climber person. evidence? we’re only 90 days into 2009 and he has already repeated James Litz’s Testify (v12) at the Lilly Boulders, sent mega-classic The Shield (v12) at Little Rock City, while also finding time to tick his own Sittin’ Sidewayz (v11) at Grandmother Mountain near his home base in Boone. this is where we should say: “we recently caught up with Jon and got to ask him a few questions”, but let’s be honest: sending emails hardly qualifies as ‘catching up’.Read the rest of this entry »

i just got paid today. this means 1) i can buy some epoxy to try and save some boulder problems from certain doom and 2) i can buy a domain name for this blog.

i am now the proud owner of icftg.com. so next time someone asks “where should i go for courageous prose related to – but not limited to – the rockclimbings?” you can tell them to go to icftg.com rather than the unwieldy dot wordpress crud i had 4 minutes ago.

also, i added a bunch of links and broke them into appropriate categories.

when i lived in arizona i climbed with a fellow who grunted whilst pulling the mega-hard climbing moves. i myself, being what i call a ‘silent killer’, am always sort of amazed at the grunting population. it’s weird; like they can push themselves through difficult moves without holding their breath and/or muttering obscenities at inanimate clumps of stone. in a word: amazing. Read the rest of this entry »

despite my many attempts to find boulders in the red and in morehead, most of my woodland adventures in the past 5 years have resulted in squat. a few problems here and a few problems there, but never really an ‘area’ full of good boulders. always a (re)cleaner, never a finder. /sigh

but as i may have *cough* mentioned in my last post, in hundreds of text messages, in dozens of phone calls, and a veritable landslide of emails – the gods have recently smiled upon my rock crusade. that’s right, i’m a – and it’s tough to get this out when you’re crying – developer.

i develop things. things that aren’t rashes, or addictions, or cures for anything. i develop boulder problems in woods that are reasonably close to my house. i do this. and it’s good fun. but as my uncle once told me, “with great power comes great responsibility”. and it’s this responsiblity that i detail – in list form no less – after the jump.

bouldering in kentucky has long been a joke of sorts; something you do when you can’t find a belayer for the red or can’t afford the gas for a trip to chattanooga. i mean, there are certainly some good solid problems in the bluegrass state and even a few decent areas, but – for the most part – the vast majority of our ‘grounded’ sandstone boulders are sand piles.